With Both Eyes Closed
by Grey Silverstone
Summary: Set after  and briefly during  Swan Song. Michael makes it into the pit, but Sam misses. But it's not exactly Lucifer that remains. And Dean has no idea where the hell they're supposed to go next.
1. Chapter 1

**With Both Eyes Closed**

**Disclaimer: **Not mine! Supernatural belongs to the CW, and the characters belong to their creators. They are simply visiting my playground.

_Wow_, that sounded creepy.

Please R&R!

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><p>"<em>Sam! It's not gonna end this way! Step <em>back_!"_

_Sam turns, and it's him, and he's fighting, face screwed up in pain and hands balled at his sides. "You're gonna have to make me."_

_Adam/Michael pulls back, briefly, and then tries again, stepping towards him. He takes one step forward—Sam takes one step back. "I have to fight my brother, Sam. Here and now. It's my _destiny_!"_

Screw destiny_, Dean thinks_. It's screwed with us enough.

_And then Michael dives at Sam and Sam steps back, and Michael, somehow—_This wasn't supposed to happen, _Dean thinks_, _eyes blood-blurred in a sea of red—somehow, Michael knocks Sam off balance and he falls just short of the pit. And Sam's hands fly up to his head and he screams and Michael screams because, holy shit, he's got one foot in the cage and it's dragging him down with more strength than he'd imagined it had, and Sam is spasming on the ground, blood slipping from his ears, from between his fingers. _

_And then, aside from the howling of the pit and the last vestiges of Michael's cries, up steps Sam. Sam with cold eyes, cold, empty eyes, and he looks over at Dean, confused, for a second. Then the coldness is gone, and he just looks raw. "My brother—?" And now Dean knows he's lost him and he lets his eyes close. The blackness is a bliss he didn't believe in. _

_And now he still doesn't, because, even with both eyes closed, red pushes at the corners of his vision and all he can hear is black, black laughter. _

"_Hey." Lucifer with Sam's face jabs him with burning instruments, but he's not going to give him the satisfaction of seeing him squirm, so he takes it, relaxing into his bonds even as another hook goes in. "Hello?" Another jab, and the poker stops just short of his heart. Something doesn't really fit, though—Lucifer doesn't look like he's enjoying it. He just looks sort of earnest. Oh, go—he's using Sam's puppy dog face, and, yeah, now Dean closes his eyes, because the asshole couldn't leave well-enough alone. _

One set of eyes close, another set of eyes opens.

Sam's face stares down at him, eyebrows creased with concern. "Are you… can you stand?"

Dean spits at him, but the bastard still has Sam's reflexes so he dodges out of the way, and yet, he _still _doesn't get it, just leans forward again and rests his hand against the side of Dean's head. "I'll go get you help, okay? I'll find something—"

Wait, but—but he sounds concerned. And even Lucifer wouldn't fake it like that, right? Something… something's wrong, Dean knows it, but he's too high off his own blood loss to figure it out right now. Is it…

"Sammy?" he rasps, and it's his best attempt.

"I—" Sam shrugs, helpless, and does the awkward, tight-lipped smile that he has on reserve for strangers, and it leaves Dean feeling like he's on the wrong side of his skin. "If you say so."

_What the _hell_—_

"Dean."

He thinks he might've just popped some of the few remaining bones in his neck in snapping it around to look, and—yes. _Yes_. It is.

Cas stands over him, blank expression on as always, and it has to be one of the most beautiful things Dean has ever seen.

Sam starts and falls back, flinching away from the angel. Dean recognizes the reaction—it's shock, like he genuinely didn't expect to have Castiel over his shoulder. Dean didn't either, but it's Cas. It's an angel. Shouldn't the devil has, I don't know, angel senses? Shouldn't they have tingled?

But he can't care right now, because someone, _someone, _is still alive.

He struggles to see Cas through the one eye he can open. "Cas… you're alive?"

Cas nods once, evenly. "I'm better than that." He reaches down, brushes his fingers across Dean's forehead, and Dean can feel everything realigning. His jaw is in the right place again, he can see, he feels like he can move again, and Cas is alive. He could cry. He's just about screwed up enough.

"Cas—are you god?"

It's a smile that breaks the blankness of Cas's expression. Barely, but it's there. "That's a nice compliment, but no. Although, I do believe he brought me back. New… and improved."

Dean follows his movements with his eyes, watches him walk over to Bobby's still form—and then Bobby's not still anymore, he's jerking up, and breathing, and looking at Dean, and looking past Dean to Sam, and says, quite clearly alive, "What the _hell _is that?"

Sam looks from Dean to Cas to Bobby and back to Dean. "How… how could he do that?" Sam breathes, fear widening his eyes to disks.

"He—um." And now Dean has no idea what the hell is going on.


	2. Chapter 2

**With Both Eyes Closed**

**Hello-o**: _Thanks for the reviews. :) You guys basically made my day, so... *VIRTUAL HUGS FOR ALL*_

**_Disclaimer: _**_See previous chapter. Basically, I own nada but my own mental mutations of plot. _

_Please read/enjoy/review/:)_

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><p>"Sammy? Sam," Dean tries again, going for repetition because it's really all he can manage right now. "Is that you in there?"<p>

Possibly-Sam shrugs, looking helpless. "I don't know."

"Well _think harder_—" he doesn't realize that he's moving towards violence until Cas has his arm in an angel grip, holding him back.

"Dean." Dean looks back at him, and the fight goes out. It's been too long. He's spent _too long_, high-strung to the point of snapping, and he's _tired_, tired to the bone. And so, he can't really say he doesn't see it coming, Cas' hand reaching out, two fingers brushing against the tension between his eyes.

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><p>The blackness is the closest Dean has come to peace in a long time.<p>

_In the blackness, he sees Sam, and Sam's eyes flash—no, they glow, gold and white and dangerous, but when he looks at Dean, there's no danger. All the eyes say is 'lost' and Dean's not sure why but that's the single most terrifying thing he's ever seen in the world. And he's seen a lot._

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><p>Dean comes to, conveniently enough, on the floor of a ratty-looking motel room.<p>

Cas is the first thing he sees, standing over Sam. Who, of course, is on a bed.

"Dude." Cas looks over. "What the hell?"

"You protested when I tried to lift you," Cas explains, offering Dean a hand up. He doesn't take it. Pissy angel.

Dean clambers to his feet, head still swimming and everything inside of him feeling just a little off-kilter. Bobby sits at a desk, chair turned to face Sam's body. Dean can feel his eyes on him, tracing his motions around the room. He doesn't say anything, just focuses on _one foot, one more, left foot, come on_, until he's made it to the bathroom and he can shove the door closed and slide down against it and no one can see him freaking the _hell _out.

Recap: Sam. Lucifer. Pit. Michael. Sam…

And then everything stops making sense.

Okay.

Logic.

If Sam didn't make it into the pit, then Lucifer took over. But if Lucifer took over, they'd all be dead. So Lucifer _didn't _take over, which means that it's Sam. Only… He'd looked into those eyes, into _Sam_'s eyes, and there hadn't been even a _flicker _of Sam left in them.

Logic sucks.

Dean bends over the basin, trying not to feel as downright nauseous as he does. There's no reason to freak out, right?

Doesn't matter. He can't freak out. He can't. Because that _thing, _out there, that thing is either his brother, or it's not. And it's his responsibility to do whatever he has to. Not theirs.

Dean runs cold water over his hands and sinks his face into the shallow pool formed between his fingers. Okay. Time to face whatever fresh hell the pit dragged up.

He's all bluster again when he makes his way out of the bathroom. Cas hasn't moved; he's still standing over Sam's sleeping form, staring at it like a snake in the bushes. Dean's not sure if that makes Cas man or mongoose, but he can't ask that yet. Not yet.

"How're you doing?" Bobby asks after a moment, giving Dean a careful once over.

"How do you think, Bobby?" Dean asks, tired, again, and scraping his hands across his face like he can just peel that away.

"At least you're alive. At least you're _both _alive," Bobby says pointedly, glancing over at Sam's body on the bed. From the corner of his eye, Dean can see Cas rolling up the cuff of a sleeve.

"Is he, Bobby?" Dean feels his eyes narrow to the thrum of an oncoming headache. "Because I don't know. Whatever the hell is in there—I don't know. I don't know if it's Sam."

A sudden burst of light has them both twisting their necks back, staring at Castiel. His hand is buried to the elbow in Sam's chest, gold leaking out from around it.

"What the hell, Cas?" Dean barks, and it feels like that's all he asks the angel, these days. He shouldn't even be surprised anymore, not really. He should be expecting it, but when he starts to lunge forwards, Bobby grabs his arm, shaking his head once. _Don't do it, kid. You mess him up here, you'll mess _him _up for good. _

Even so, Sam sleeps, untroubled and breathing steady, as Cas roots around inside of him for what seems like an eternity.

And then he pulls back, and the gold light fades, and Dean lets his muscles relax, a little. He knows his eyes are, probably, still wide and alarmed and _freaking out_, but at least Sammy didn't feel it—

"Well, I'll be damned," Bobby breathes, breaking the silence.

"He didn't feel that," Castiel says, inflectionless as ever.

"He….didn't… feel that," Dean parrots blankly, trying harder than he should to process. "Didn't _feel _that? How the hell did he not feel that?"

Bobby shrugs. "Beats me. Cas did it to me, it felt like and 18-wheeler found its way into my colon. And Sam just slept through it all, like—"

"Like there wasn't even a soul there to begin with," Cas says evenly.

"No soul?" God, Dean sounds like a broken record. He blinks back at Cas, uncomprehending. "How could he be here with no soul?"

"No _human _soul," Cas clarifies, taking a step away from What Once Was Sam Winchester, and what is now something nobody will _freaking _talk about, and it's pissing him off.

"Cas—"

"Don't ask me how," Cas cuts in, "because I don't know. I don't know how this happened, I don't know if I _want _to know, but that's not Sam, Dean. Not anymore."

Dean pulls back, sharply. Just because—he _knew_, alright? He knew. But he didn't want to _hear _it.

"Then what is he?" Dean asks, because it's the last thing he can do.

Cas turns to him, eyes as dark as thunder, and says the last word Dean would've put money on.

"_Lucifer_."

_No_.

Sam sits up.

"Hello?"

Dean pulls out his gun.


	3. Chapter 3

**With Both Eyes Closed**

**an: **thank you for clicking. please enjoy. insert usual pithy disclaimer here.

(This came out kind of angstier than I expected it to. :( Goal for the next section: More. Fun. (And/or more wise-cracking Dean))

Enjoy!

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><p>"Wait."<p>

Cas steps between the gun and the abomination, and Dean falters.

"Cas. What the hell are you doing?"

"What's going on—"

"_Shut up_," Dean snaps, and Sam's body cringes. It looks terrified. Castiel holds up his hand until Dean lets the weapon fall to his side, and then he turns to face the creature, his hands braced against the bed.

"W-What are you doing?" Sam's body asks, and it is, Castiel believe, genuine fear he sees. Lucifer, so far as he knows him, has never shown fear.

"Who are you?" Castiel asks. He will know a lie if it is told. Even if Lucifer is, for the moment, inconvenienced, Castiel will know him for his lie, and then he'll let Dean shoot him. Even if it does no good.

"I-I…" Sam's body's mouth hangs open, and words do not come out. There is a pale aura around him that is as other as Castiel is, and Cas reaches out a hand to brush against it. It flares gold. Sam's body jumps and now he is pressed against the headboard, eyes wide and terrified.

This is abnormal.

"What was that, I don't… _What are you_?"

Cas raises his hands. Regardless of whether or not his Father's prodigal son is hidden within the folds of Sam's flesh, there's something achingly, deceptively gentle about him. _Vulnerable_. "I'm not going to hurt you." Cas can't.

Dean can; his gun hand is coming up already. "Like _hell _we're not—"

"_Dean_," Cas stresses. "Please." Dean is human. Dean does not understand the angelic intrinsic need to protect. What he does understand, Cas notices, because of the way he cringes away from it, is how lost Sam looks. Because, Cas reasons, human connections are built around their physical presences as much as their souls, if not more so. And Sam's down-dog expression has most of Dean reaching towards fixing, helping, doing something_, anything_, to erase the need in that expression.

And Cas sees Dean remind himself of whom—what—he's looking at, and he sees the way it is pulling the hunter apart.

But he's gratified to see Dean tuck the gun away.

Gratified and a little sick.

Dean turns his face away from Lucifer and Lucifer turns Sam's eyes to Castiel.

"What are you? And who am _I_? Please…" He tries to look to the other two for some sort of sign; Dean won't look at him. Bobby can't look away. "Just… please."

Cas nods, once. "I am Castiel. I am an angel of the Lord."

The Beast with Sam Winchester's face looks from Bobby to Dean, as if for confirmation. No one is laughing. Sam doesn't look as if he was expecting them to. "Okay," he says slowly. "And me? Who am I?"

Cas takes a deep breath and doesn't breathe out. To breathe out, words will follow, and he isn't sure that what he plans on saying will go over well with either brother. Well, the one brother left, and the other brother's vessel. Either way, he should prepare himself for the worst.

But this is the best course of action.

Soldiers should not doubt.

"You." Cas glances at Dean, briefly. He isn't sure how this will affect the other man, but surely he will see sense, when the time comes. And the time is now. "Are Sam Winchester. And this is your brother, Dean."

A choked, strangled noise comes from Castiel's right, and he looks up in surprise as Dean takes his arm. Cas supposes that the grip is supposed to be tight, supposed to come close to painful. This is how Dean means it.

Dean smiles tightly up at him, and then, finally, looks at his brother. "Excuse me, _brother_," and the word carries as much venom as Cas has ever heard. Even Sam, Cas notes, as Dean drags him to the next room, looks startled and, once again, terrified.

Cas is in the corner and Dean pulls their faces close, blood in his eyes. "What the _hell _do you think you're doing?"

"Helping." Cas squirms. He can't feel the pain he probably should, but Dean's hands, balled into the cloth of his coat, are making him uncomfortable.

"Helping," Dean scoffs, tightening his holds as Cas fidgets. "_Helping_? _I _thought you said he was the _devil_."

"He is, technically, Lucifer," Cas concedes, trying, unsubtly, to pull away from Dean's tightening grasp.

As it turns out, he doesn't have to bother; Dean shoves him away, and he _stumbles_, his heel catching against the wall. He stares at Dean.

That should not have happened.

Everything _about _today has been a perversion of the normal order.

Cas doesn't think very highly of where things are going.

"Well then," Dean says, and now he's avoiding Cas's eye, too, rolling up the sleeves of his jacket and untucking his gun from his waistband. "Excuse me while I ventilate him. Now." Dean turns away from Cas, starting back towards the other room. Castiel throws out an arm to stop him, pulling him back by his shoulders.

What he doesn't expect is Dean throwing an elbow back at him, catching him directly underneath his sternum. Cas gasps, because, no, maybe not pain, but he _definitely _felt that.

"_Wait_," he pants, sliding towards the floor. "That's not the… wisest… idea. He's _new in this life_, _Dean_," Cas says, voice staring to carry because Dean will not, _cannot_ do this.

* * *

><p>Dean glares back, ignores the little twinge of conscience at the back of his mind because he <em>just knocked down an angel<em>, _the _angel_, _the only one who stuck around to help_. _Cas looks up at him like that's supposed to _mean _something, like that isn't the freaking devil in his brother's body. The devil in his bones.

"And what the hell is that supposed to mean?" Dean asks finally, as coldly as he can manage.

Cas lets his eyes slide closed, briefly (Dean wonders if he's saying his prayers) and looks back up at him, eyes washed with relief. "He is new. He has been remade. I… believe that your brother, in essence, destroyed the Lucifer that we knew."

"Oh yeah? And what did Lucy do to Sam?"

Cas's silence is answer enough.

Dean knows he sounds bitter—hell, he _is_. But he still reaches down to pull Cas to his feet, and the angel nods once, and, for a moment, he can pretend that this is just normal, a Team Free Will pow-wow, Sam and Bobby in the next room, he and Cas in this one. But it's _not _because _that _is _not _Sam.

"So what're you saying," Dean asks after a moment, after Cas appears to have straightened all but the usual rumples on his accountant suit. "That we let him live?"

"I'm saying," Cas says, and it's like _Cas _is gone and _Castiel _is in the building, because he's all business and oozes 'not-to-be-trifled-with.' "You treat him as if he were your brother."

"No."

"Dean—"

"_No_." It's not even a _question_. "I can't do it, Cas. I _can't_. I had a brother, okay? Remember him? This tall? Long hair? Looked kinda like that guy out there? _I had a brother_. And we grew up together, and we argued, and we fought, and I loved him. And that—" He can see around the corner; Not-Sam is looking over at them, still wide-eyed and confused, and Dean lowers his voice as he points from Not-Sam to Castiel. "_That _thing, is not him. And I'm not going to pretend that it is." He jabs a finger into Cas's chest, and the angel frowns down at it.

Cas drags his gaze up to Dean's. "Well, then, what do you suggest?"

The wind leaves his sails and the finger falls. "We… I don't… Why—Can't we just…"

He has nothing. All he wants to do is _shoot him_, dammit!

Cas steps away from him, glancing over at Not-Sammy. "This Lucifer appears to have no memory, nothing to make him the evil creature he was. Not of who he was, or what he's done. Maybe, if we're lucky, that memory is permanently gone. If we're not…" Yeah, he gets it.

"Something can trigger it," he fills in. He drags a hand down his face, because, Jesus, he's exhausted. When was the last time he slept? Oh, yeah. _Before _the whole damn world decided to start ending. "And, what? He goes back to Mr. Slap-Happy Destroyer-of-Worlds."

"No," Cas says solemnly. "Just this one."

Oh, _god_. "Dammit, Cas…"

Dean turns back to him, because all he really has is one question, one that no one's been inclined to answer fully, just _one_. "Why this, Cas? Why Sammy?"

Cas shrugs, then reaches out, slowly, tentatively, and pats Dean on the shoulder. "Sam saved the world. Do this for him."

Before he can think twice about anything, Dean walks out of their corner, stops at the foot of Not-Sam's—Sam's bed.

This is the hard part. Right here. Because every thing that flickers across that face is so. Very. _Sam_. And Dean can't remember the last time they had a conversation that wasn't of dire importance. Can't remember the last time he made fun of Sam's t-shirt or played something obnoxious just to get him. Can't remember the last time Sam laughed at him. Can't remember the last time they laughed together.

But he remembers this expression. He remembers how he looked in panic room, or when the last seal was broken. Lost and confused and sorry and broken.

And he knows that, this time, he's the source of most of it.

Dean slams his gun down on the table and turns on his heel, slamming the door against the wall in his pursuit of _getting the hell out_.

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><p>In comparison to his exit, the door swings closed gently, almost daintily.<p>

Cas walks out to see Bobby look at him, once, regretfully, before standing. "Uh… I should…" He walks out, after Dean, Cas hopes, because that was all just very awkward.

Sam looks at Cas.

Cas looks back.

It's something.

At least he hasn't exploded again. He'd rather not go through a repeat of that particular experience.

"Um… Castiel," Sam says slowly, looking up at him, nervous. "What have I done?"

Cas sighs and walks around the bed to the window. He raises the shades. The Impala is still where Dean left her, so he can't get to far. Then again, it's Dean. And so, of course, the worrying is left to him.

Cas knows that Sam has forgotten that he's asked a question, because he can see him jump when he answers him. Answers the devil, only not the devil, yet. "More than anyone should ever have to know."

Maybe this is everyone's chance to start again.

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><p><strong>an: <strong>if you read it, please review it! even if it's just to say that you were here. :) (and maybe to know what/who i'm writing for. and also to inflate my ego. heh heh...)

LTT,

G


	4. Chapter 4

**With Both Eyes Closed**

**a/n: **minor update, I know. I'm trying to figure out where this is going right now, so this is a bit filler. I'll be going deeper next chapter. And certainly longer. and, god, writing for Bobby is making me downright weepy. The _angst everywhere right now_. It's killing me.

-GS

**disclaimer: **kripke is their keeper; I am, sadly, not.

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><p>Holy <em>shit<em>.

Dean thinks that he should maybe probably keep walking until he hits Australia, and then keep going, keep going until everything is just freaking _over_. The end of the world, he could deal with. Hell, he _did _deal with it. He freaking _beat it_. But the fact that he beat it just to end up here, walking on the side of a highway with his shoulders tucked against a brutal wind and the beginnings of a rainstorm meant that God was kind of a dick.

"Dean."

He's so used to Cas popping up that he doesn't even falter, just keeps walking and waits for the angel to fall into step with him. There isn't anything he can say right now that will make this okay. This will never be okay. They're pretty far gone.

"Dean, I—"

"Don't give me that, Cas," he says tiredly, glancing to his left. The angel looks impassive, as blank as he was when he was trying to convince Dean to be the Good Man that the whole freaking world needed. Well guess what? He was. And did he get a thank you? No. He got the goddamn Devil. "Don't try and reason this out. Don't try and find a—a _bright _side to this. All I can think of is trying to figure out how to end him, and how to do it, and getting to move on. And now I can't even do that—"

Cas is quiet for a moment, just walking steadily alongside him. A car blares its horn as it flashes past, side mirror almost clipping Cas in the arm. Dean tugs him to the side.

"I can't be around him, Cas," Dean says slowly, considering. "I know this—I realize you don't—listen. You're doing what you think we have to, and I get that. I do. I just can't go back there, Cas. I can't." He sticks a hand out to stop Cas and turns to face him, hopes he sees exactly what he's trying to get across in his eyes. "I can't go back there."

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><p>Oh, hell.<p>

Those goddamn Winchesters. Anything bad will find them, anything worse will stay. Bobby eyes Sam from his perch at the desk, And now, they've left him here with the goddamn devil. What the hell is he supposed to do with a baby devil? Here, have a binky, and maybe a side of torture while you're at it? Idjits.

Sam blinks at him. "What?" he demands automatically. "Somethin' you wanna say?"

He shakes his head, quickly, shifting a little on the bed. Bobby has to fight back an automatic surge of sympathy. The devil. It's the devil. Lucifer, not Sam. But Cas did brief him, a little bit, before chasing after the other idjit. But evil is evil. It's what the angel doesn't seem to understand. Doesn't matter what outfit you stick the wolf in, it still ain't no sheep. Bobby knows that. He knows that that's killing Dean, right now, wherever the hell he ran off to.

It's silent, him staring at the abomination, the abomination staring anywhere else. And then he—it—he, does break the silence with a question.

"What I did… it must've been pretty bad, huh?"

"That's one way of putting it," Bobby snorts, and takes in the flinch of Sam's shoulders. He can't help comparing them to the way he used to shake under anxiety and stay steady under pressure. It's a dead-ringer. "Jesus H. Christ. You really don't remember a thing of it, do you?"

Sam's head shakes, his gaze open and earnest when he meets Bobby's eyes. "No. Nothing. Well, one thing." His expression darkens into a frown, and Bobby remembers, for a second, that he died today and it wasn't no great shakes. He remembers that that's the expression that led to Cas shattering across the ground and splattering across him. Remembers that expression accompanying his neck breaking.

But, then, he remembers, also, that expression from when Sam was little Sammy, struggling through archaic text no eight year old had any place to look at; remembers him older, that expression when he did research, when he was hunting something, trying to save someone, putting all of himself out there for strangers who would probably never know it.

"I remember one thing," Sam says, meeting Bobby's eye again, and Bobby tries his hardest not to look away. "Dean."

"You remember your brother?" Bobby blurts, before he can think it through, before he can think that, uh, yeah, Lucifer probably misses Michael, and that might count as a trigger, but Sam's head isn't exploding and Bobby isn't dead, so he guesses it didn't trigger much.

Sam shrugs. "I guess. It's the only memory I have. Just one thought. _'Dean.' _But it was like… Like I had to do everything for him. It felt like I was going to die, that I just had to _do something_—" He shifts uncomfortably under Bobby's scrutiny. Bobby can't look away. "And then everything sort of exploded and I woke up on the ground."

Bobby blinks at him. "Oh, _hell_."

* * *

><p>"<em>Dean, where the hell are you<em>?"

"Diner," Dean mumbles through a mouth full of cheeseburger. "With Cas. Guy was hungry. Why?"

"_Cas was hungry my ass. I think you should both get back here. We've got some figuring out to do."_

Dean swallows, throat dry. The burger goes down like ash and dust. "Bobby, I can't do that."

"_Well, you're gonna have to figure out how to stomach it. He's asking for you. He's _worried _about you, Dean. I don't know what freaking kind of devil that is, but it's freaking me out_._"_

"Yeah, fine. We'll head back in a little while." Dean closes his phone with a snap. Cas looks at him from over an almost-full plate of fries, his burger, at the very least, long gone. "Something's going on with Sam." Cas nods, reaching towards Dean's forehead. "Whoah, _what _are you—not _here_. Not right now. We've got a little while."

Dean calls the waitress over and orders some food for Bobby, and then, after a moment of hesitation, something for Sam, too. He sees Cas, out of the corner of his eye, look somewhat appeased, and that's a little bit of an upside, at least. Making an angel nearly smile.

Which reminds him.

"Cas…" He's not sure how to ask this. It gets personal, doesn't it? And how personal do angels get? How closely do they guard their privacy? He's not all that into the idea of getting smote, here, but all he's really asking for is information, and how bad could that be? "What are angels… I mean… When did you start?"

Cas cocks his head, eyes narrowing and lips turning down at the edges. "Start what, Dean?"

"You know, like… Were you a kid? How did you come into things? Did you grow up?" Dean can feel his cheeks heating up. _God_, but he sounded like a five year old learning for the first time that girls and boys have different anatomies, and that's where babies come from. Jesus. He didn't _really _want to know where angel babies come from. That is what it sounded like, though.

"Of course," Cas answers, confused. "I came into being, and then I grew into my place."

Dean's nodding, because maybe Cas _has _made things a little bit better. "Great. Okay. So you can be raised? You don't finish up exactly as you're born."

Cas shakes his head, brow furrowed to his nose. "Of course not. I was born the way I was meant to be. God molded me to what I am."

When the waitress arrives at the table again, Dean can't even raise enough interest to smile at her. So much for hope. All it did was hurt, every goddamn time. It's just him who is just dumb enough to forget it.


End file.
